This spring, six student directors have selected five plays to bring to the Ballard stage, all of which explore what it’s like when reality itself comes into question.

Elliot Jakupcak directs Sure Thing by David Ives, a comedy that follows two strangers in a coffee shop who navigate a conversation with something no one else gets: the chance to start over when you say the wrong thing.  

Ella Papineau directs The Yellow Wallpaper by Cameron Colwell and Georgia Drinan. Based on the chilling short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this play follows a new mother confined to her bed as she tries to make sense of the figure she keeps seeing in the pattern on her bedroom walls.

Autumn Bailey directs The Support Group from Hell by Jeffrey Harr, a dark comedy that follows a teen who joins a support group with members that are far more strange (and possibly supernatural) than she was expecting.

Izzy Rampersad and Milo Palmer co-direct The Hallmarks of Horror by Peter Bloedel. In this “whirlwind tour of horror tropes,” scientists attempt to explain what makes scary movies as scary as possible. The resulting demonstration is much more ridiculous than intended.

Up, All the Way Up? is a new play written and directed by Rose Champion, which follows a woman in the late 19th century as she writes the obituary for the peculiar and mysterious death of a millionaire on a mountain.